All About Me Theme
This year we decided to take the first couple of days back to school and do a few All About Me activities. In hindsight, I wish I had been better about recording some of these things with my older girls so I made this All About Me keepsake page we could use for the coming years. I’ll keep it in my Etsy shop so it’s easy to find.
A few suggestions for younger kids who aren’t writing yet - you can fill it out for them or you might encourage them to draw some little pictures - it’s why I put some boxes on here instead of just lines. Beginning around age 3 children often begin expressing themselves in scribbles and little shapes that may not look like much to us — but if you ask them — they’ll be able to tell you exactly what it is so I always like to give them an opportunity to express that because it is such a sweet record to have. I will say something like “Tell me about your picture” vs “What is this?” so I don’t sound like I have no idea what they drew. :) And, then I like to write off to the side what they say. For scripture — some children may not have a favorite scripture yet, but don’t miss the opportunity to pull out some scripture story books or the gospel art book and remind them of their favorite stories.
As I was pulling together ideas and what I would want my children to take away about themselves - the thought kept coming to me - that I want them to always remember their divine identity. I’ve been working on setting up a little learning area in our home and along this theme I decided I wanted a few “I am” affirmations in our space. I decided to create another simple page with the focus on “I am a child of God” that we can use for discussion the first week of school as we read some “me” themed books — including this really cute one which is all about discovering our gifts from God so we can use it to bless others and be an example of Him. So, I’m planning to keep this I Am piece up year round. And, if you want it too - you can grab it here.
There are always so many cute things to do with this theme, but the first thing I kept coming back to was wanting some self portraits of the kids. So, for an art tie in - I previewed three self portrait tutorials for elementary aged children on YouTube, showed my twins, and they choose to do this one. It turned out to fit nicely because of the “royal theme of the painting.” If you’re planning to do something similar - I would for sure do this activity after you discuss anything about our divine identities and read The Gift That I Can Give because maybe you will and maybe you won’t - but you might see some of that spiritual expression come out through these portraits. We’ll watch the video to help learn some techniques, but stepping back and encouraging them to add in their own thoughts and impressions is what I am going for here. We will read Psalm 82:6 and I might even encourage them to write this scripture on their paintings. We’ll see! This is a list of the art supplies we’re keeping on hand this year so it’s easy to do projects like this without much planning or prep.
For all you homeschoolers - there was a lot of interest in activities to go along with this theme. I racked my brain and considered putting together some printables, but when it came right down to it I didn’t want to do anything that took a lot of time to cut, print and prep. All of these ideas are super simple. It’s more about utilizing the tools a lot of you probably already have in your own homes. I’ve linked some of my favorites, but please remember, if you’re newer to homeschool and/or worry about cost - you can do all of these activities with super cheap materials from the dollar store (grab $1 set of alphabet flashcards and numbers and you’re set for the same games and activities) A lot of these activities are centered around my four year old, but they will absolutely keep my two year old engaged and he’ll start naturally picking up on some of the skills so if you’ve got young toddlers - don’t shy away from including them. We're doing all things pre-school family style because my twins basically think they’re running the pre-school (lol!) And, this will be a great time to build their confidence in what they know, practice some leadership, and the boys will naturally copy and want to be like the twins so it all works out. I am going to give you a few ideas we’re doing the first week that’s just all in my head, but if you want to read more about all of the curriculum we’ll be using this year - click here.
This year we we will be doing letter/number of the weeks so I am starting with “M” (I am not going through the alphabet in order, rather beginning with MSAT - but this is for a post in and of itself). And since my older son has the letter M mastered I am adding in the sight word “me” to our activities. My twins are learning cursive this year so to engage them at their level - we’ll use cursive letters and I’ll invite them to help teach the boys the manuscript letters.
So here are some of the super simple activities that coordinate with this theme we’ll be doing through out the week at circle time and I’ll try to show you how I’d modify them depending on the age just in case you need some inspiration:
Phonics: Phonics basket M - this is where the kids collect items around our home that begin with the letter m and add it to our phonics basket. (We will do this each week) You can review the sounds each day or find new items. A fun twist on this this week is to have your kids find some things that represent them or “me.” This is a great time to use sandpaper letters (cursive for my twins) and go over the sound of M.
Writing/Spelling: write “Me” on sticky notes or index cards and hide around the room for a “me” scavenger hunt. You can also simplify this and just hide the letter M or make it more advanced by having them practice writing their names. (The twins can practice writing letter M in cursive and maybe the word me just for fun). You could also do your kids names here. There are so many tracing activities or art activities revolving around a child’s name which are fun to do along side this theme.
Math: Construct letter M using different materials - you can use magnatiles, counting cubes, legos pom poms, marshmallows, anything! Practice counting aloud as you go. We’re adding the letter e to make the word Me. We’re working on numbers 11-20 with my son so I’ll be looking for ways to practice that while we use some manipulatives. This is also a fun time to work on your child’s age. Depending on their level - Can they count to it? Spell it? Recognize the number? For the twins we’re doing all things multiplication right now so I am going to have them practice their 8x multiplication facts this week while we’re doing some numbers with the boys.
Motor Skills: Practice cutting letter M or Me (I’ll just write with a sharpie on a piece of paper nice and large - so easy). The next day we will mix it up and cover letters with stickers. These are my favorite to use with preschoolers because they can peel them themselves. Avoid using stickers you have to start for them because it isn’t giving them the practice to develop their fine motor skills. If your child is new to scissors please use these scissors and not the cheap plastic ones that don’t cut anything. These will help them develop the muscle strength and makes for a super easy transition into real toddler scissors.
Science: We’re following ENWC this year for science and doing the night sky the first week or two we are doing school but on our pre-school learning shelf I am including some human body books and specifically our 5 senses so that if the kids want to spend some time here or we have some down time we can dive into this a bit while on the topic of “me.” A super easy 5 senses activity we’ve done in the past is to do blind bags/folds and practice using senses to guess what is in them. There are so many directions you can take this and depending on how things go another thought I had was tracing our bodies and doing some simple labeling which is easy to modify depending on age level (simple body parts for preschoolers and organs for early elementary. I’d recommend using this paper for something like this.
Social Studies: Me on the Map is such a fun book to help learn about the world around them. We’re planning to read this one morning and we will do our continents floor puzzle and find where we live on our globe. I’ve done this a ton with my twins, but it’s a great time to do it with my little guy so I’ll for sure let my girls lead this. We’re also reading This Is My Home This Is My School because it’s a perfect book to tie in with back to school and this theme about understanding more about ourselves and our environment.
Sensory Bin: You can use any filler, but I am just using some white beans and adding in the letters of my kids names from our moveable alphabet. We will help my two year old son match his name. But, since my older son has his name mastered he is going to work on spelling the other names in our family, but if your child doesn’t - I would totally use letters from their name. They will love finding their letters and matching! I And we can use the index cards to match up the letters. I’ll probably add in some toy people figures and maybe a few of my kid’s favorite cars or people.
I’ve had a lot of questions on using sensory bins and I need to do a whole page on it, but until then my advice with these are to only “open” the time used in sensory bins at a special time - this will help keep it exciting and tone down the mess. Choose 1-2 fillers you can rotate out a month and then switch the materials you use on a daily to weekly bases. So, for example, maybe you’ll want to do letter find the first few days of the week and then a number find the last few days of the week. You can also rotate the tools. So, maybe the first week you do letters/numbers and the second week you add in measuring cups and animal figures/people that coordinate with something else you could be learning about. Here are some good numbers, letters, and sensory tools that are easy to rotate and can be used in a lot of other activities.
Music and Movement: I am adding this here to remind others that there are a lot of songs and finger plays you can do or listen to. But, unless you know them it is challenging to try to awkwardly read off a paper while keeping your kids attention. So, if you know some (like 10 Little Fingers and 10 Little Toes or Head or Shoulders Knees and Toes - which works well with the the book Head to Toe by Eric Carle) then these will be great. We’re using another curriculum to help with music this year so I am not putting a lot of emphasis in this area for this theme.
Books: Here is a list of a few books I already had and the ones I grabbed at the library that fit along perfectly. I put my favorites at the top. We will just read 1-2 of these day.
In the next week or so I hope to get the shelf set up and when I do - I’ll for sure walk through it all. I hope this gets the ball rolling for you though! Shoot me a question or let me know if you have any other ideas you love to do!
UPDATED to add in a picture of our learning shelf!
